


4-F

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27453145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Upon being found to be seriously ill, Klinger finally escapes the army.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	1. Be careful what you wish for

Every language- and Klinger spoke two of them - had some version of the phrase “Be careful what you wish for.” For two entire years he’d wished to return home… and here he was, back on American soil. He swallowed hard. He was going to be  _ buried  _ in American soil. 

Clammy, dizzy, jet-lagged, and cold, he fought off a spike of fear that made the stuff he’d felt under shelling look like the kind of fear you felt at a movie jump scare. 

A strong hand took his. “Come on, S-Sergeant. Let’s go h-home.” 

Max blinked, trying to focus. “Miss Winchester?” But who else could it be, really? She was not just tall - but  _ regal _ \- auburn hair coiled at the nape of her neck, hat cocked to one side, sporting a jaunty feather. He’d never learned the color of Charles’ eyes in the ten months he’d studied them, but hers were plum golden and gentle, devoid of pity. 

She shook his hand then, then drew him into a hug that threatened his ribs. It felt  _ amazing _ . Since his diagnosis, no one seemed willing to touch him, even though he wasn’t contagious, and he’d been drummed out of the army so quickly that he hadn’t exactly gotten to say his goodbyes. His diagnosis had come in Seoul. He’d cried himself to sleep alone in a hospital bed there and been shipped to Tokyo the next day for more procedures. None of them had worked. 

All those nights on sentry duty he and the other corpsmen had joked about being dead men walking. Now he was one. He was crying when she drew back, but Honoria acted as though she couldn’t tell (other than pressing a handkerchief discreetly into his hand. It was one of Charles’). She kept him distracted as she navigated out of the city, telling him about the efforts she had gone to in order to prepare for his arrival. He protested and she laughed, assured him that she had access to her brother’s accounts. 

She knew he was bewildered and exhausted so, that first night, she walked on the beach with him. She knew that comfort came in on the tides, existed in silence and nearness. His hand was shaking when she took it, but he held back. Then she helped him learn the Cape house that had been her grandmother’s and was now hers and Charles’. She hadn’t been kidding about making him comfortable; the refrigerator contained his favorite foods and the blankets on his bed were soft and warm. She even made him go get a bath in the slate tub, saying, “Every p-picture I’ve ever seen of K-Korea was dirty.”

Once he was settled, she went downstairs to the room that served as her brother’s office. She knew she couldn’t call - she’d be waiting for ages to be connected- but she knew he was waiting for word. 

“I would like to send a t-telegram. Uijeongbu. Korea.” She spelled it, laboring not to stutter. “My dear b-brother, it was, as you warned me, a profound e-experience to claim S-Sergeant Maxwell K-Klinger from the airport. My h-heart is quite broken. Y-you once had o-occasion to telegraph me about the precious n-nature of life. Your w-words came home to me today. I wish I could be with you to ease your p-pain. Know that I will do e-everything I can to stave off  _ his _ . Your most and ever loving sister.” She drew in a rattling breath that was thick with tears, feeling hollow. “Do you have all of it? Thank you. Goodnight.” 

***

In Korea, Charles was furious. What right had the Army had to take Klinger at all? Now they had filled some of the last months of his young life with terror. He sighed. There was more of that ahead, he feared. And he couldn’t even be there to help Klinger face it. Not that anyone except Honoria thought he had any right to do what he was doing anyway. 

Pierce, Hunnicutt, Houlihan, and Mulcahy had been equally furious with what they saw as his presumptive nature. But what had he been  _ meant _ to do? Klinger’s family couldn’t afford to care for him, and while a veteran’s hospital would take him, their care was known to be subpar at best. It would be like dumping Klinger in an institution. He couldn’t save the Corporal, but he could do his best to preserve his dignity and comfort. Klinger would have fought him, he was sure, but when they’d spoken the poor thinghad been in shock and scared and he didn’t want to die alone. Honoria was no nurse, but she was a caring person. She would hold his hand, Charles knew. 

Pierce had argued that a better use of Winchester’s money would have been to make him comfortable in his own home near his family, but Klinger had explicitly vetoed this. He hadn’t wanted his mom to know her only son had been shipped to war; he didn’t want to die right before her eyes. 

“Klinger has arrived in Boston,” he informed his fellow surgeons, folding the telegram. He would have liked to say the Corporal had arrived safely, but since his own body was killing him it didn’t seem proper. 

BJ made a huffy sound. “I still say it’s damn strange, Charles. Sending him to Boston.”

“I had the Corporal’s permission.” 

“But why do it at all? If  _ I _ come down with something, are you going to pay to care for me?” 

“No.” The o had that drawn out Atlantic flavor that reminded Hawkeye of an incoming tide filling pools along the sand; it could drown or nourish. “For the simple reason,” Charles went on, “That you, Hunnicutt, are fortunate enough to have loved ones who will step in and ensure that your dignity and comfort are upheld.” 

Hawkeye’s nickname had not been lightly given. The darkness in Charles’ eyes had assumed a previously unknown character. However composed the man might appear on the outside, he was losing something. Something dear. 

Hawkeye distracted BJ at that moment, certain on some level that guided his work in surgery that Charles had endured all that he could bear. When he chanced to look over at Charles again, the telegram was crumpled in his huge hand and his lashes were damp. He had sent Klinger to Honoria to be cared for, but, Pierce wondered, who on all the unfair Earth was going to take care of him?

***

Back in the States, Klinger struggled to fit himself into life in the house of his friend … and learned to live with what was happening to him. He grew tired easily, but, when he had any energy at all he read and enjoyed the beach and tried to be useful. Honoria said nothing when he took on the task of reordering Charles’ entire wardrobe. 

“You do not know cuteness,” she wrote to her brother, “until you have seen your pretty Corporal asleep on the floor of your closet, head pillowed on your sweaters. See enclosed sketch.” 

Then, as she finished up the letter, an idea came to her. She was an inferior artist - but why not find an actual one? Klinger would protest, of course. There were times when he’d felt himself pretty - but worthy of being immortalized on canvas? No. Fortunately, Honoria had spent a lifetime bullying Charles. Getting Klinger to do what she wanted was cake. 

***

Back at the 4077th, Charles wore out the nibs of his finest pens (and his phone privileges) seeking answers. No piece of evidence was too anecdotal or too small to merit his exploration. If there was anything he could do to make Klinger even 1% more well or more comfortable, he would. He was just compiling suggestions in a note to Honoria (alternating ice cream flavors was supposed to combat food aversion - worth a try) when Major Margaret Houlihan and Lt. Kellye Nakahara appeared with popcorn, fudge, and  _ actual  _ wine. He assumed they were stopping by to borrow his record player or the like, but Margaret unceremoniously shoved Pierce’s garbage off of the supply crate (the unsettling label:  **human blood** gleaming on its side), wiped it down, and plunked down the tin serving vessels. 

“Glasses?” she said in lieu of a greeting. 

Charles was well-accustomed to snapping to when his sister gave him a task, so he found clean drinkware before finding time to say, “Ladies, I more than welcome the company in this pit, but what, may I inquire, is the occasion?” 

Margaret ripped the cork out (Charles was somewhat frightened to see) with her  _ teeth _ and spat it into a wastebasket. “Come off that high horse of yours, Charles. You really think  _ we  _ don’t know what you’re going through?” 

Certainly he saw sympathy in their eyes - one pair aquamarine, the other dark as a doe’s as she trembled on the edge of open space - but why did they believe he merited it? 

“What is it I am supposed to be enduring?” 

“We aren’t Pierce and Hunnicutt,” Margaret reminded him. “You could move a damn walrus in here and they wouldn’t notice.”

“And I would have the added benefit of civilized conversation once again,” Charles agreed, pleased to see that this made Kellye giggle. 

“We know why you sent Klinger to Boston. We wanted to say,”

Kellye reached out and took his hand; he was so shocked that he allowed it. “We’re sorry, Major,” she finished up for Margaret. “It’s not fair.”

“Not to either one of you,” Margaret agreed. “So we thought we’d cheer you up. Tell you some stories from his first year here - stuff you might not know. Kellye looked after Klinger a good bit.”

She patted his hand before letting go. “He’s a great dancer, same as you, Major.” 

“I… ladies, I am grateful, truly - but Margaret, military as you are, I cannot believe that you approve!” 

“Klinger did a lot of things that drove me crazy - but he’s a sweet kid and he sure doesn’t deserve this after being drafted. And I really don’t have room to talk, Charles. I was seeing Frank when you got here. The only thing I  _ might  _ have something to say about is you being so slow.” She nudged at him with a booted foot. “You should’ve kissed the hell out of him at New Year’s. You would have gotten away with it. Everybody knows you can’t drink.”

It made them all laugh - and they did drink and devour the fudge (Kellye had hidden coconut strands in it and they helped counter the saltiness when the memories they shared brought tears) - getting Charles tipsy enough to paint his toenails. “I’m sending a picture to Klinger!” Margaret crowed. Before they left, late that night (making Hawk salty because they wouldn’t stay for gin chasers with him) both women made Charles promise to tell Klinger the truth. It was late, but not too late. 


	2. Words written and recorded

The real purpose of the many medications surging through his bloodstream was, the doctors in Tokyo had told him, to buy time. They couldn’t reverse the tides of the battle being waged inside of his cells, but they could enact a siege. When it broke… well, things would go very quickly then. The side effects of these medications left him three steps behind most of the time, trying to process and catch up. 

Maybe that was why Honoria wasn’t making any sense. 

“A portrait, ma’am?” His head tilted in confusion, a bird-gentle motion that always made her want to protect him… and had resulted in some very stern (though doubtless useless) letters to her representatives. Who drafted someone as young and amiable as this little Corporal? “Why?” 

“Maxwell, darling, if y-you do not s-start calling me by my name, I am g-going to throw things at you. Prob-probably soft things to s-start, but with all the g-glass and m-metal at hand, is this a g-good risk?” 

This was an ongoing battle between them. Klinger had never learned about chivalry (outside hearing it discussed on movie screens) but when it came to Honoria he embodied it. Since she was nursing him through an illness that sometimes left him, literally, in her hands (she’d fallen asleep with his head on her lap) this made for some interesting clashes. Klinger sidestepped the name thing for the moment, leaving Honoria to reflect that she probably ought to be glad he wasn’t addressing her as “m’lady!” 

“What do you mean ‘why,’ d-dear?” In her head, she was trying to remember if the artist who had painted Charles upon his graduation from medical school was still working. It would be fitting to have them done in the same style. Then she thought of the two portraits facing each other, thought of Charles missing that dear face, and had to stab a sob right in its soft belly to prevent its shoulder-shaking manifestation. 

“Why would anybody want a picture of me?” 

“To tre-treasure, of course.” 

His dark eyes were still confused and a truly radical notion began to form in her mind.  _ Charles, you goddamned worthless coward.  _ She glanced at her watch. It was too late to try to leapfrog connections to Uijeongbu… even if her stupid, stupid brother deserved to be dumped out of bed. Her job, then.  _ Well, at least  _ **_I_ ** _ won’t make a mess of it _ . “Maxwell, p-please tell me that y-you know  _ why  _ Charles s-sent you here.” 

That birdlike motion returned. “For the doctors he knows, the good ones. And to keep my ma from, you know, having to watch.” She saw worry touch him then. “Do you want me to try to find another spot? Colonel Potter,” 

She glared daggers. “ _ No _ , s-sweetling. I am n-not evicting you.”  _ Though it seems I am about to dump you out of a cozy nest of obliviousness…  _ “Come on. Let’s have t-tea.” 

Klinger’s eyes were wide as he watched the unusual tea ceremony she decided to enact. There were tea cups involved, but the stuff in them was stronger than any dried leaves that had ever been dumped into Boston’s harbor, and she’d brought down a decorated box, too. Rustling through it, she drew out an envelope. “Ah, here. I d-don’t know if this is the f-first one, but it ought to do the t-trick. Can you read Ch-Charles’ handwr-writing?” 

He nodded but hesitated to take the missive. “This is your personal correspondence, ma’am. I can’t…”

She closed his fingers on the paper. “If it is m-mine, then it is m-mine to share, Max. P-please. I can f-follow you around and r-read it to you if I m-must, but we will get t-through this much f-faster if you read.”  _ And I think you will find it worth the hurry.  _

“You think it’s important?” He searched her eyes, trusting her despite their short acquaintance. “That I know what it says?” 

She nodded, thinking:  _ A matter of life and death, darling.  _

“My dear sister,” he began then, soft and hesitant as the whiskered face of a deer mouse peeking out of its hiding spot beneath a broad, bright leaf. Then he stopped, “I thought the Major recorded his letters to you.”

“He d-did not always have t-time. Sending t-tapes, too, is expensive. He w-writes most days, you know.”  _ And some things he isn’t brave enough to say, not even to me.  _ She considered that there ought to be a feeling of guilt to accompany this bold undertaking of hers… but it never came. Max was dying - would die in her house, under her care; he deserved this truth. 

“My dear sister,” he started again, still visibly uncomfortable, “you will doubtless think it an exaggeration when I say that were it not for thoughts of you I would forget, entire, the pleasure of a pure smile, here. There is cause to grin at a jest, or even at the gallows’s humor that occurs in OR - but smile for joy? Only for thoughts of you - and at sight of one other.” 

Klinger looked up then, looking like a schoolboy who had managed a difficult lesson and wishes to be set free onto the playground. Honoria took a sip of “tea” in hopes that he would echo her; he was, she thought, going to need it. 

She smiled her encouragement. “G-go on, dear.” 

“I wish I could tell you precisely how the sight of that slender form in its in-in,” he passed the paper over to have her pronounce “inimitable,” before continuing, embarrassed at all he didn’t know next to her and Charles, sad that he’d never get the chance to learn, “inimitable array of colors came to be all that I see here, but some workings of the heart remain mysteries even to me. I can endure the blood better when he is nearby, however, and if it ever could be my privilege to make him mine, to bring him home to you and our happy house, I think I would never fear to face anything ever again.” 

Klinger’s mind had not yet accepted or understood what he had read, but his  _ heart  _ knew; Honoria knew this from the way he trembled. She took the dear thing’s hands. “And you see? He  _ d-did _ bring you h-home, darling, even if h-he couldn’t be here to s-share it. There are g-good doctors in every American city, my l-love. Ch-Charles sent you  _ here _ because he loves you and w-wanted to give you h-his world. His life.” 

She had been calling him sweet and gentle things since he arrived. She saw him realize, then, what she actually meant, what they really were to each other. “I never had a sister before, Nori.” 

“Then I s-shall not have to w-work very hard to become your favorite!” She drew out another letter. “Shall we r-read the next one?” 

*** 

It was very late and the opened correspondence seemed to doze beside him, rustling softly. Wrapped in an old robe that belonged to the man who loved him, Klinger breathed in Charles’ scent from the fabric. Warm, happy tears trickled from the corners of his eyes as he recorded an answer to years worth of letters that weren’t even addressed to him, but which contained the great truth of his life. 

“Hiya, Major. I’ve never made one of these things before but I figure this’ll spare you my bad spelling. How are you, Charles? I’m recording this from your room. Nori says it’s okay. She says you won’t like that nickname either but she won’t let me call her “miss” or “ma’am” and I’m more scared of upsetting her than I ever was of upsetting any officer I ever met!” 

He stopped the tape to catch his breath, hated the way his body was constantly betraying him, giving him away to waiting Death. He brushed tears from his long lashes, began again. 

“I - I guess I wanna ask if you can make sure you listen to this part alone, Major. I don’t want to share it with anybody but you. I wish you were here… but maybe I couldn’t be brave enough if you were.”

He waited a few seconds, sure the tape recorder could pick up the sound of his heartbeat.  _ I wish I could store a few beats on tape, hang onto ‘em long enough to see you again.  _

“I love you, Charles. I think I missed you before I ever met you, and I fell for you the day you showed up. You can ask Captain Pierce about that if you want. I bet he remembers. I didn’t think you could love me because you’re so fancy and a Major and you went to school… but you sent me here to the person you love best in the whole world, so I guess you can. I’m real sorry I couldn’t tell when you were right beside me. But hey, if you think about me in your awful cot when you go to sleep and I think of you here, maybe you’ll be able to feel me hold your hand - or hold  _ you _ . I wasn’t good at anything I did in Korea, but I could’ve been the very best at that.” 

He steadied himself to end with a promise. “Charles, I know you know medicine and all that stuff better than me, but I want you to know I’m going to fight this thing as hard as I can so I can still be here when you get home. I can go, I think I sorta made my peace with that way back in Tokyo, but I oughta get to hold you at least one time. So, get your points, Major, okay? I’m waiting for you and I can’t wait to see your beautiful eyes again. Stay safe, please. Come home to me.” 


	3. Homecomings

Calls from the main office at MASH 4077 were kept to strict minimums per army regulations, but Walter O’Reilly decided to look the other way just this once. Major Winchester was talking to his sister who was playing a recorded message for him. 

“I w-would have m-mailed it, Ch-Charles, but I didn’t think you ought to w-wait to hear. Oh, darling, d-don’t! Regrets are of no u-use. Love him  _ now _ . He n-needs you now most.” 

“Honoria, I assure you that I have not stopped loving him since I discovered him here. There is no change?” 

“H-he’s just so very tired. It f-frustrates him, I t-think, how little he can do before g-getting worn out.” 

“It would.” He closed his eyes, wished he could hold the younger man as he rested, wished he could be there to ensure there was no undue suffering. In that moment, Charles wondered what it would take to get sent home. A suicide attempt? A battlefield injury? “Honoria… you will tell him…”

“Call back, s-stupid. I will do a-almost anything for you, Ch-Charles, but I won’t p-propose.” 

Charles thought of the stories he had heard of Klinger getting married over the radio… then unceremoniously divorced by mail.  _ I cannot save you,  _ the surgeon thought, and felt hatred well in himself at the futility of his talents and training.  _ But I can give you all I have if you will accept it and me.  _

“I will call as soon as I can,” he vowed. 

***

But when he called again, when Radar got the call through, the loquacious surgeon couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Honoria was talking over Max, words more ruptured than usual by emotion. Max would  _ not _ talk over Honoria (an adorable concession he made, Charles was sure of it, out of respect for her) but he  _ did  _ try to fill in the spaces she left, reminding him of nothing so much as a tiny brown mouse peeking its whiskered face out of a chink in the wall. The resulting message was jumbled at best, exasperating, indeed, when static cut in, and left Charles, ultimately, to cry, “My dears, I love you both, but I am trying to propose here!” 

“Gotcha, Major,” Max’s voice was warm and dear even  _ with  _ static. “But you’re gonna want to hear this.”

Winchesters did not jump up and down, but Radar saw Charles get close (and he wouldn’t have told if he had). “You are quite sure?” 

“It’s eminently t-treatable,” Honoria assured him. “And that’s  _ after  _ a s-second, third, and f-fourth opinion!” 

Translated, this meant simply: Maxwell Q. Klinger was not dying. 

He had been prepared for in sickness and would have kept on loving the Corporal after losing him, but it seemed that it would not be required. Having heard the good news delivered, Honoria turned things over to Max; even Radar endeavored to make himself invisible. 

“Did I lose you, Major? The connection’s not great.”

“No.”  _ And I did not lose  _ **_you_ ** _ , my love.  _ “I am here, Max. I am here.” 

“Never thought I’d say this, but I wish I was, too!”

“No, better you stay safe and get truly well, beloved.” The endearment came easily; he ignored O’Reilly’s wide-eyed look. 

“You still want me to stay here, Major?” 

Charles knew what he was truly asking. “Darling, your illness had no impact upon my affection except to force me into its declaration. I do not love you less at finding you well. Yes, you should remain in our home.” He closed his eyes at the thought of that limber body sprawled in his sheets. 

“It won’t feel like home ‘til you’re in it.” 

“Perhaps not, but thoughts of your presence there away from blood and gunfire shall sustain me until my return. O’Reilly tells me I have monopolized our wires far too long, but I am sure you will be hearing from all of the 4077th with their good wishes soon. Just one more thing, darling.”

“Charles?” 

“When I do return, you will permit me to bear you across that ancestral threshold?” 

“I’ll be waiting at the door.” 

***

Months later, Charles Emerson Winchester III left Korea in the dress browns in which he had arrived. His sister claimed him at the airport, weeping so hard at the sight of him that she could not, at first, see to leave. 

And, as promised, Maxwell was waiting for him at the door to their home. Leaving all pretense at caring for or about his luggage behind, Charles came to stand before the love he’d thought to lose, to appraise him and find him beautiful and well. The moment Klinger stepped into his arms, the Major was finally truly home. 

End! 


End file.
